Enso: Hand's Up Don't Shoot - Virginia Cohn Parkum, C. 2021

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Enso: Hand's Up Don't Shoot
Virginia Cohn Parkum, c. 2021

In Enso: Hand’s Up Don’t Shoot, Virginia Cohn Parkum appropriates … Read more Enso: Hand's Up Don't Shoot
Virginia Cohn Parkum, c. 2021

In Enso: Hand’s Up Don’t Shoot, Virginia Cohn Parkum appropriates the Zen Buddhist ensō — the single brush-drawn circle symbolizing wholeness, enlightenment, and the continuity of existence and transforms it into an image charged with contemporary political urgency. The circle, rendered in a dense sweep of black paint, is interrupted at its apex by two raised hands. Their silhouettes break the continuity of the form, converting what traditionally signifies unity and spiritual completion into a gesture of surrender.

The brushwork is direct and uncorrected, preserving the immediacy associated with ensō painting while simultaneously destabilizing its meaning. The weight of the painted arc suggests gravity and permanence, while the hands, lifted and open, introduce vulnerability. The slight drips and uneven edges reinforce the sense of exposure rather than transcendence.

Parkum’s intervention reframes the ensō as a site of rupture. Instead of embodying harmony, the circle becomes a containment field, evoking cycles of surveillance, containment, and systemic force. The raised hands reference the protest gesture that emerged in response to police violence in the United States, transforming a spiritual symbol into an emblem of bodily risk and public witness. The act of raising one’s hands is traditionally associated with surrender or compliance. It becomes an indictment of a social order in which submission does not guarantee safety.

The stark contrast between the black paint and the untouched white ground intensifies the work’s moral clarity. The empty interior of the circle reads simultaneously as void and space of potential — a silent field in which the viewer confronts the tension between ideals of unity and lived realities of inequality. The hands interrupt not only the circle but also the promise it carries, suggesting that spiritual completeness is fractured by systemic violence.

By merging Eastern philosophical symbolism with a contemporary protest gesture, Parkum collapses temporal and cultural boundaries, inviting reflection on the fragility of human dignity within structures of power. The painting refuses consolation; instead, it offers a visual paradox: a circle that cannot close, a gesture of surrender that exposes injustice, and a symbol of enlightenment transformed into testimony and one of Parkum's most powerful consolidations of her spirituality and humanity.

-Jonathan Flike See less